The Camouflage Society - We Who Can Transform

19.10-18.11.2018Open every Friday to Sunday from 13-17 or by appointmentMaridalsveien 3

Opening 6 pm. Friday 19th October

Image Credit: Hamza Mohamed Ali

Vi som kan forvandle (We who can transform), is the culminating exhibition of Kamuflasjefellesskapet (The Camouflage Society), a summer school for young immigrants in Norway, organized by Gabo Camnitzer with Mehdi Torkaman, at Tenthaus Oslo in the summer of 2018. The exhibition features documentation from the schools activities, and process-based work by its participants, Simon Rezene, Wari Paiz, Hamza Mohamed Ali, Farrah Algul, Huda Algul, and Maha Algul.

Assuming the name of a collective of civilian artists who developed modes of concealment during WW1, participants in Kamuflasjefellesskapet experimented with modes of transformation, literal and metaphorical, to explore questions of representation and assimilation in Norwegian society. Drawing links between processes of cognitive assimilation and cultural assimilation, the participants unpacked the ways that abstract conceptual schemas predetermine how we encounter difference.

Kamuflasjefellesskapet sought to expose the false premise of a bounded Norwegian society and to reveal the internal contradictions of the socialization model of immigrant education more broadly. Rather than focusing on fitting into Norwegian society, participants in Kamuflasjefellesskapet experimented with methods to elude it’s grasp, and exceed the constituting projections of its representational logic.